“The right wants to win with these movements what they couldn’t win in the elections,” warned the president at an act in Chuquisaca in the south of the country, describing it as inadmissible that they are now trying to raise their heads when they can do not have popular support. .
Arce and Choquehuanca won the 2020 general election with 55.1 percent of the vote.
The executive secretary of the Santa Cruz department workers’ headquarters, Rolando Borda, in an interview today with the state broadcaster Bolivia TV, denounced that the attack and looting of this headquarters was planned and financed by some businessmen from this eastern department.
He described that all violent mobilizations deployed as part of the indefinite strike demanding “for a 2023 census yes or yes” were planned and involved the entry of firecracker-laden trailers into Santa Cruz through the funding of some businessmen who he said to know.
He specified that, based on the information received, the financiers of the violent takeover of the headquarters of the union and the arson of the facilities of the department’s farmers’ association, carried out last Friday, have quite a lot of weapons in a luxurious cattle estate in Puerto Suárez, on the border to Brazil.
Borda insisted that the prevailing situation in Santa Cruz department was not a strike but a fascist dictatorship at the whim of two people, notably Governor Fernando Camacho.
Violent actions began on Friday when the paramilitary Union Juvenil Cruceñista attacked a march by trade unionists and transport companies waving white flags demanding their right to work and freedom of movement.
In connection with this attack, members of a team from the Bolivian television station were injured and some of their equipment was damaged.
The paramilitary shock groups then went to the headquarters of the Peasant Workers’ Union and, overcoming the mediation attempts of the police forces, occupied it and set it on fire.
During the day, other buildings of state institutions and social organizations were also besieged, and in the early hours of this Sunday, the Cruceñista Youth Union attacked the neighborhood known as Plan Tres Mil, which was not ready to strike, using firecrackers and high-pressure pyrotechnic means.
A town hall held in Santa Cruz in the early hours of this evening with Camacho and civic leader Rómulo Calvo decided to maintain this violent measure with blockades and violence against those who oppose it.
rgh/jpm